Newbie - first post, scarey!

all_hours

anh1904

With the SOA you posted you are just about breaking even on your household spending without taking into account any debt repayments.

£28K of debt - paying back at 2% a month - you would need to increase your monthly income by at least £570. It will be difficult to earn this amount with mystery shopping and focus groups etc. You can't maintain your current standard of living and pay off your debts.

You're in a fortunate position with such a good income. There are other DFWs who need to cut their spending to the bone for 5 years or more to pay off a fraction of your debt. You could cut back for a year or two and make a significant dent.

You say you don't want to give up the kids saving plans. Put this into perspective - you are paying £720 a year saving for the kids - you spend nearly £1000 per month on luxuries. If you cut right back to clear the debt then kept it up for another 3 months to make up the missed savings you would have paid more into the kids savings accounts in 3 months than you do in 3 years.

You work full time, have a new baby and two kids from a previous marriage - do you really want to do more and spend less time with your family to make up the deficit when you could do less and find cheaper ways of having luxuries? Keep an eye out on the freebies, grabbit and discount forums for cheap holidays, 2 for 1 deals on meals, kids go free days out etc.

Have you signed up for quidco. Next time you need to renew any insurances do it through them and you can earn a little cash back. Buy your petrol at Tesco and you can redeem clubcard points for holidays and days out.

I understand what you are planning to do with the new card - to see exactly where everything is going. This makes me wonder how you worked out the figures in your SOA - is it from what you spent last year or have you estimated what you might spend?

Dolly_Smith

anh1904 wrote:

In the meantime, hopefully I can accumulate several hundred pounds in matched bet profit with mine and my partners names and accounts to use to do it. £75 on offer tonight via William Hill and Corals for starters, so multiply by 2 and there's £150 less the bits to match.

Aaargh! I'm hoping to god I'm comletely misunderstanding what matched betting is, but surely you're not hoping to make profit from companies like William Hill and Coral??? They're bookmakers - when did you ever see a poor turf accountant?

anh1904

Matched betting involves taking both sides of the bet (so one side definitely wins) and profiting from each and every bookmaker sign up bonus. It's all mathematics and there's a whole thread on it, so don't fret.

SOA was done with what we used to spend in the old house, now I am trying to make economies, and having everything on the statement means I can't "forget" to write anything down, so I can't get my actual spending wrong when doing calcs.

La_Tristesse_Durera

Tricky_Vicky wrote:

Hey La Tristesse Durera - are you married?;) You sound like quite a catch!:beer:

Haha! Nope I'm single, what a waste!!


:beer: :beer:

all_hours

anh1904 wrote:

Matched betting involves taking both sides of the bet (so one side definitely wins) and profiting from each and every bookmaker sign up bonus. It's all mathematics and there's a whole thread on it, so don't fret.

SOA was done with what we used to spend in the old house, now I am trying to make economies, and having everything on the statement means I can't "forget" to write anything down, so I can't get my actual spending wrong when doing calcs.

Good luck with the matched betting - I'm still getting my head around the details.

This match betting diary is interesting reading

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=90197

So it's the increase in mortgage that's pushed you to rethink your situation? You must have been managing well before to reduce your debt by £50k.

anh1904

Dredged through all my credit card bills, and called HSBC to find out what I coudl do with my premier points. Anyhow, turns out I can convert them into £100 worth of shopping vouchers (at M&S). An unexpected bonus for sure.
Also, got just under £100 for my old handsets (mobile phones) so now to put all the cables and software and everything onto Ebay and maybe get a few more pennies.

lynzpower

you could always save those M&S vouchers towards Xmas presents, and release 100 from that pot ( or stop it going in ) with those - Im getting 100 quids boots vouchers from the pru for my health cover, no prizes what everyones getting for thier Xmas....!

best of luck with the ebaying, Ive got a box here to rake through later :rolleyes:

anh1904

£115 vouchers from loyalty points on credit card was a nice boost to the morale and Christmas fund.

A 0% offer for 13k which I can use up till August 07 has also appeared, which means that together with the 0% on purchases card currently racking up, I will have very little interest bearing debt until Summer next year, and can service all interest bearing debt to zero quite quickly.

Car insurance renewal has come down by £145 a year at the new property, and existing insurer is £30 less than confused.com after a little white lie on the phone.

Oil (vegetable) instead of diesel for 20% of my fuel is looking likely to save about £15 a month on fuel too and I cannot notice even the slightest difference in performance as yet.

Cut food budget down to 400 for now, and have abandoned days out, meals out and any other entertaining spend to see how it goes. Searching for Organic Box scheme for south Birmingham to help cut food costs even more, though far from the ideal time of year to see places at their best.

Direct debits account for £1726
Accruals each month amount to approx £778 (insurances, dentist, hols, golf etc.) and actual spend this month is a miserly £300 out of a (downwardly revised) monthly budget to 25th of £560. The new budget shows a surplus of £300 to service cards, so likely "net" repayments to total £560 this month less any spend between now and payday.
(I have paid 260 car insurance, so only need to accrue £518 this month.)

First matched bet resulted in a profit (as yet uncashed)
Ebay sales are all ongoing
Old phone handsets sold for £59 of Argos vouchers
Currently have 11,000 nectar points which I need to get a value on too.

Feeling very positive with this months achievements, and with the matched bet proving a success, expect to do a few more this coming weekend and thereafter, which added to my ebay experiences may well make a sigificant contribution. Will potentially break downwards through the 28k barrier before end of October, and then will make a target of 27000 by new years eve.

Next Target of 25k by end April.

lynzpower

Id imagine that 11000 nectar points would give you at least a couple of weeks groceries, the money saved can then come off the debt!
Wicked

How did you get that many can I ask, is it just from grocery shopping? Im not a nectar user, but I did hear that nectar was closing down ( debenhams stopped taking it I read)

anh1904

Have had my nectar card for what seems like an age, however, I have never taken anything from it, used it only for shopping and petrol.
I thought it worked out to about £55 worth of shopping, so hardly awe inspiring, but every little helps (or should I only say that about Tesco clubcard points)!